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As hearings start this week on a Columbus school-district reform bill, an earlier proposal
allowing for a state takeover of the state’s largest district is likely to vanish.

The House last month added a provision to the two-year state budget that would allow the state
school superintendent and mayor to appoint a five-member “distress commission” to run any district
found by the state auditor to have “knowingly manipulated student data with evidence of intent to
deceive.”

The Columbus schools are under investigation by the state auditor, the FBI and the Ohio
Department of Education over “scrubbing” student attendance data and changing grades to improve the
district’s state report cards.

Last week, Reps. Cheryl Grossman, R-Grove City, and Tracy Maxwell Heard, D-Columbus, introduced
a bill requiring that a levy go before Columbus voters this fall that would share property-tax
dollars with charter schools. It also would give the Columbus mayor the power to sponsor charter
schools, and it would create an independent auditor to investigate district operations.

Grossman said it was her intent to remove the distress-commission idea from the budget so
attention could focus on the new legislation. The budget is now in the Senate.“Many (legislators)
think separate legislation is the most-effective and preferred way to go,” said Sen. Randy Gardner,
R-Bowling Green, the chairman of the subcommittee hearing education budget issues.

Sen. Kevin Bacon, R-Minerva Park, said he has not received confirmation that the
distress-commission language will be taken out of the budget bill, but he prefers the alternative
proposal.